ALCOHOLISM

American Medical Association describes alcoholism as..

An addiction due to excessive drinking of alcohol

an illness characterized by significant impairment directly related to

persistent and excessive use of alcohol. Impairment can involve
physiological and social dysfunction, and for psychological, social and
genetic reasons some people are more vulnerable to this disorder than
others.
A polysaccharide such as starch is a carbohydrates that need to be malted during the

fermentation process of making beer

Alcohol is most damaging to the liver cells where alcohol is oxidized.
Acites is the term used when fluid fills the abdomen as a result of liver damage.
Legal Separation vs. Divorce

In a legal separation, the parties are still married, versus a divorce where the
marriage is ended. A legal separation is a court order that mandates the rights and
duties of a couple while they are still married, but living apart. In a divorce, the
spouses are no longer married. Legal separations are not too common, but can be
helpful to a situation where the spouses work through any personal or financial
issues affecting the marriage. In proceedings for legal separation, the court decides
the following, much as it would in divorce proceedings:
A legal separation allows parties to live apart and they are unable to remarry.
Separation maintenance: this includes spousal and child support, but is called
something different to distinguish it from the effects of a divorce. The court papers
for separation maintenance are usually filed by a lawyer through what is referred to
as a "motion pending litigation". The court's decision on awards for separation
maintenance does influence what each spouse is awarded should they later
continue to divorce proceedings.
Child custody
Child visitation
Property division
Property division during legal separations and divorces are typically determined by
the couple's situation and how it relates to the property. The following situations are
common forms of separation affecting property division:
Trial Separation
A trial separation refers to a period of time during which spouses live apart to
decide whether or not to continue the marriage. This trial separation has no real
legal effect, unlike a legal separation where the parties are ordered by a court to
fulfill certain property divisions and duties. Instead, a trial separation is viewed as a

period of time in the couple's marriage. Any property or debt acquired during a trial
separation is still considered to be acquired during the marriage, and hence,
probably marital property. This is true even if the couple ultimately never gets back
together. Not until either spouse decides to end the marriage does this property
classification have the potential to change (depending on the state the couple lives
in).
Living Separately
Sometimes, circumstances arise that lead to couples living apart with no intent, one
way or the other, to continue the marriage. Additionally, some states have laws that
require couples seeking to file a no-fault divorce to live apart for a designated
period of time. Living separately can affect the property division. Property and debt
acquired while living separately is classified differently depending on what state the
couple lives in. Some states determine the property classification based on whether
either spouse has the intent to end the marriage.
For example, in community property states, all property and debt acquired before
this intent to end the marriage is still considered community marital property. When
one of the spouses gains the intent to end the marriage, then all property and debt
acquired thereafter is separate property. Other states consider property and debt
acquired while merely living apart to be separate property, regardless of the
spouses' intent. Still other states consider all property and debt to be marital
property until the divorce complaint is filed with the court. Be sure to check your
own state's laws to see how they address property.
Permanent Separation
Once a couple decides to separate for good, they have a permanent separation.
This permanent separation probably has no legal effect as compared to a legal
separation in which one of the spouses has actually filed separation paperwork in
court. Most states view all property and debts acquired after a permanent
separation as the separate property of that acquiring spouse. Debts that are
acquired by either spouse after a permanent separation, but before a final divorce,
and are used for things necessary for the family, are treated as joint debts of both
spouses. These debts can include things like house payments, maintenance of the
family home, and expenses relating to the care of the children.
Free Case Review from a Family Law Attorney
Because each state has its own laws regarding property and debt division, it's
important to check your own state's laws. These determinations can become quite
convoluted due to the changing of the couple's circumstances, so it is a good idea
for each spouse to consult with his or her own attorney for help. A family law
attorney can help you sort through the consequences of a legal separation vs. a
divorce. Start by getting a free initial case review today.

If the court determines that a mediation agreement is fair and freely entered into by both
parties, the court will:

-incorporate their agreement into a court decree

give full force to each provision as an order of the court.
legally dissolve the marriage.
Poverty is general scarcity, dearth, or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material
possessions or money. It is a multifaceted concept, which includes social, economic, and
political elements. Poverty may be defined as either absolute or relative.
Causes of Poverty
Author And Page Information
by Anup ShahThis Page Last Updated Sunday, September 28, 2014
This page: http://www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty.
To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the
print version:
http://www.globalissues.org/print/issue/2
Almost half the world over 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day.
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567
million people) is less than the wealth of the worlds 7 richest people combined.
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their
names.
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed
to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didnt happen.
1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live
without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million
have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the
age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).
More Facts (and Sources)
Poverty is the state for the majority of the worlds people and nations. Why is this?
Is it enough to blame poor people for their own predicament? Have they been lazy,
made poor decisions, and been solely responsible for their plight? What about their
governments? Have they pursued policies that actually harm successful
development? Such causes of poverty and inequality are no doubt real. But deeper
and more global causes of poverty are often less discussed.
Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization are global
decisions, policies, and practices. These are typically influenced, driven, or
formulated by the rich and powerful. These can be leaders of rich countries or other
global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people.
In the face of such enormous external influence, the governments of poor nations
and their people are often powerless. As a result, in the global context, a few get
wealthy while the majority struggle.
These next few articles and sections explore various poverty issues in more depth:
14 articles on Causes of Poverty and 6 related issues:
Poverty Facts And Stats
Last updated Monday, January 07, 2013.

Most of humanity lives on just a few dollars a day. Whether you live in the wealthiest
nations in the world or the poorest, you will see high levels of inequality.

The poorest people will also have less access to health, education and other
services. Problems of hunger, malnutrition and disease afflict the poorest in society.
The poorest are also typically marginalized from society and have little
representation or voice in public and political debates, making it even harder to
escape poverty.
By contrast, the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to benefit from economic
or political policies. The amount the world spends on military, financial bailouts and
other areas that benefit the wealthy, compared to the amount spent to address the
daily crisis of poverty and related problems are often staggering.
Some facts and figures on poverty presented in this page are eye-openers, to say
the least.
Read Poverty Facts and Stats to learn more.
Structural AdjustmentA Major Cause Of Poverty
Last updated Sunday, March 24, 2013.
Cutbacks in health, education and other vital social services around the world have
resulted from structural adjustment policies prescribed by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as conditions for loans and repayment. In
addition, developing nation governments are required to open their economies to
compete with each other and with more powerful and established industrialized
nations. To attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to
see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources. This
has increased poverty and inequality for most people. It also forms a backbone to
what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules
of trade.
Read Structural Adjustmenta Major Cause of Poverty to learn more.
Poverty Around The World
Last updated Saturday, November 12, 2011.
Around the world, in rich or poor nations, poverty has always been present.
In most nations today, inequalitythe gap between the rich and the pooris quite
high and often widening.
The causes are numerous, including a lack of individual responsibility, bad
government policy, exploitation by people and businesses with power and influence,
or some combination of these and other factors.
Many feel that high levels of inequality will affect social cohesion and lead to
problems such as increasing crime and violence.

Inequality is often a measure of relative poverty. Absolute poverty, however, is also

a concern. World Bank figures for world poverty reveals a higher number of people
live in poverty than previously thought.
For example, the new poverty line is defined as living on the equivalent of $1.25 a
day. With that measure based on latest data available (2005), 1.4 billion people live
on or below that line.
Furthermore, almost half the worldover three billion peoplelive on less than
$2.50 a day and at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day:

Read Poverty Around The World to learn more.

Today, Around 21,000 Children Died Around The World
Last updated Saturday, September 24, 2011.
Images UNICEF
Around 21,000 children die every day around the world.
That is equivalent to:
1 child dying every 4 seconds
14 children dying every minute
A 2011 Libya conflict-scale death toll every day
A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring every 10 days
A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every 11 days
An Iraq-scale death toll every 1946 days
Just under 7.6 million children dying every year
Some 92 million children dying between 2000 and 2010
The silent killers are poverty, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other
related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely
manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.
Read Today, around 21,000 children died around the world to learn more.
World Hunger And Poverty
Last updated Sunday, August 22, 2010.
Meaningful long-term alleviation of hunger is rooted in the alleviation of poverty, as
poverty leads to hunger. World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty. If
efforts are only directed at providing food, or improving food production or
distribution, then the structural root causes that create hunger, poverty and
dependency would still remain. While resources and energies are deployed to
relieve hunger through technical measures such as improving agriculture, and as
important as these are, inter-related issues such as poverty means that political
solutions are likely required as well for meaningful and long term hunger alleviation.
Read World Hunger and Poverty to learn more.

Food Dumping [Aid] Maintains Poverty

Last updated Monday, December 10, 2007.
Food aid (when not for emergency relief) can actually be very destructive on the
economy of the recipient nation and contribute to more hunger and poverty in the
long term. Free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices undercuts local
farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further
slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and
Europe. Many poor nations are dependent on farming, and so such food aid
amounts to food dumping. In the past few decades, more powerful nations have
used this as a foreign policy tool for dominance rather than for real aid.
Read Food Dumping [Aid] Maintains Poverty to learn more.
Food And Agriculture Issues
Last updated Sunday, September 28, 2014.
Food and agriculture goes to the heart of our civilizations. Religions, cultures and
even modern civilization have food and agriculture at their core. For an issue that
goes to the heart of humanity it also has its ugly side.
This issue explores topics ranging from the global food crisis of 2008, to issues of
food aid, world hunger, food dumping and wasteful agriculture such as growing
tobacco, sugar, beef, and more.
Read Food and Agriculture Issues to learn more.
Trade, Economy, & Related Issues
Last updated Sunday, September 28, 2014.
Read Trade, Economy, & Related Issues to learn more.
Corruption
Last updated Sunday, September 04, 2011.
We often hear leaders from rich countries telling poor countries that aid and loans
will only be given when they show they are stamping out corruption.
While that definitely needs to happen, the rich countries themselves are often
active in the largest forms of corruption in those poor countries, and many
economic policies they prescribe have exacerbated the problem.
Corruption in developing countries definitely must be high on the priority lists (and
is increasingly becoming so in the wake of the global financial crisis), but so too
must it be on the priority lists of rich countries.
Read Corruption to learn more.
Tax Avoidance And Tax Havens; Undermining Democracy
Last updated Monday, January 07, 2013.
Through tax havens, transfer pricing and many other policies both legal and
illegal billions of dollars of tax are avoided. The much-needed money would
helped developing (and developed) countries provide important social services for
their populations.

Some tax avoidance, regardless of how morally objectionable it may be to some

people, is perfectly legal, and the global super elite are able to hide away trillions of
dollars, resulting in massive losses of tax revenues for cash-strapped governments
who then burden ordinary citizens further with austerity measures during economic
crisis, for example. Yet these super elite are often very influential in politics and
business. In effect, they are able to undermine democracy and capitalism at the
same time.
As the global financial crisis has affected many countries, tackling tax avoidance
would help target those more likely to have contributed to the problem while avoid
many unnecessary austerity measures that hit the poorest so hard. But despite
rhetoric stating otherwise, it does not seem to high on the agenda of many
governments as you might think.
Read Tax Avoidance and Tax Havens; Undermining Democracy to learn more.
Foreign Aid For Development Assistance
Last updated Sunday, September 28, 2014.
In 1970, the worlds rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national
income as official international development aid, annually.
Since that time, billions have certainly been given each year, but rarely have the
rich nations actually met their promised target.
For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst
the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.
Net ODA in dollars and percent of GNI
Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations.
Common criticisms, for many years, of foreign aid, have included the following:
Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and
services from donor countries
Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access
for poor country products while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country
markets to their products
Large projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable; money
can often be embezzled away.
This article explores who has benefited most from this aid, the recipients or the
donors.
Read Foreign Aid for Development Assistance to learn more.
Causes Of Hunger Are Related To Poverty
Last updated Sunday, October 03, 2010.
There are many inter-related issues causing hunger, which are related to economics
and other factors that cause poverty. They include land rights and ownership,

diversion of land use to non-productive use, increasing emphasis on export-oriented

agriculture, inefficient agricultural practices, war, famine, drought, over-fishing, poor
crop yields, etc. This section introduces some of these issues.
Read Causes of Hunger are related to Poverty to learn more.
United Nations World Summit 2005
Last updated Sunday, September 18, 2005.
The UN World Summit for September 2005 is supposed to review progress since the
Millennium Declaration, adopted by all Member States in 2000. However, the US has
proposed enormous changes to an outcome document that is to be signed by all
members. There are changes on almost all accounts, including striking any mention
of the Millennium Development Goals, that aim for example, to halve poverty and
world hunger by 2015. This has led to concerns that the outcome document will be
weakened. Developing countries are also worried about stronger text on human
rights and about giving the UN Security Council more powers.
Read United Nations World Summit 2005 to learn more.
IMF & World Bank Protests, Washington D.C.
Last updated Friday, July 13, 2001.
To complement the public protests in Seattle, the week leading up to April 16th/17th
2000 saw the other two global institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and World Bank, as the focus of renewed protests and criticisms in Washington, D.C.
The purpose of the mass demonstrations was to protest against the current form of
globalization, which is seen as unaccountable, corporate-led, and non-democratic,
and to show the link between poverty and the various policies of the IMF and the
World Bank.
Read IMF & World Bank Protests, Washington D.C. to learn more.
Economic Democracy
Posted Sunday, November 26, 2000.
This next page is a reposting of a flyer about a new book from J.W. Smith and the
Institute for Economic Democracy, whom I thank for their kind permission. The book
is called Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle Of The 21st Century. Typically
on this site, I do not advertise books etc, (although I will cite from and link to some,
where relevant). However, in this case, I found that the text in the flyer provides an
excellent summary of poverty's historic roots, as well as of the multitude of issues
that cause poverty. (Please also note that I do not make any proceeds from the sale
of this book in any way.)
Read Economic Democracy to learn more.
Poverty Links For More Information
Last updated Monday, April 28, 2003.
Links to other sites discussion issues on trade, the global economy, poverty and
other related issues.
Read Poverty Links for More Information to learn more.

Trade, Economic Links For More Information

Last updated Wednesday, July 25, 2001.
Read Trade, Economic Links For More Information to learn more.
World Hunger Related Links For More Information
Last updated Monday, December 10, 2007.
Links to web sites and articles that discuss world hunger, the relationship between
populations and hunger, of poverty and hunger, agricultural issues, land rights and
so on.
Read World hunger related links for more information to learn more.
Sustainable Development
Last updated Sunday, September 28, 2014.
Read Sustainable Development to learn more.
Aid
Posted Sunday, September 28, 2014.
There are numerous forms of aid, from humanitarian emergency assistance, to
longer term development aid. Some provide food aid, or military assistance, but all
these forms of aid seem to be accompanied with criticism, either around inefficiency
of delivery, or of political agendas or more. This section attempts to look at some of
these issues.